


december 17th: pick up the pieces

by watergator



Series: december fic advent 2018 [17]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 08:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17039987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watergator/pseuds/watergator
Summary: prompt: breakdan doesn't upload any new videos





	december 17th: pick up the pieces

Phil is woken to the sound of pacing. He cracks open his eyes, letting them adjust for a moment to the dim light before he can make out the shape of a shadowy figure that walks in circles by the end of the bed.

He promptly pushes himself up onto his elbow and croaks out a small,

“Dan?”

Dan stops in his tracks and Phil can make out the way his head turns toward the bed and his eyes go wide. The look red and puffy like he’d been crying.

Guilt tugs at Phil’s heart; he knows Dan had been crying before bed where he’d tucked him up beside him and held him until the tears had ceased and they’d fallen asleep. But knowing that during some point in those few short hours Dan had gotten up, cried alone and had to get up and walk his frustrations out whilst Phil slept makes him feel a bit crappy.

“Sorry,” Dan mumbles and that’s when Phil notices Dan’s got his finger in his mouth, most likely chewing down his nails out of habit.

“Come to bed,” is all Phil’s sleepy brain manages to conjure. He pats the empty space beside him. He frowns when he realises how cold it is now.

Dan shakes his head and starts up again, this time walking toward the door.

“No, I need to stay awake for a bit. Can’t sleep,” he mumbles, and his voice almost sounds frantic.

Before Phil can get another word in, he’s already left the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Phil sits there for a moment, alone, when he gets a sudden rush of anxiety. He leaps up out of bed and pads down the stairs, heart in throat.

He’d grown accustom to the many days where Dan would walk out of the apartment without a word and return hours later, eyes rimmed red and tear tracks evident down his cheeks. It’d been so long since Phil had to wait alone all day with his knees to his chest as he waited for the sound of keys in the door; but Dan never left in the middle of the night. It was the one thing Phil made him promise not to do. 

But he reaches the bottom of the stairs and Dan’s still here.

A wave of relief washes over him coldly.

“You going out?” 

He’s not sure why he asks him; Dan is still dressed in his pajamas and he doesn’t even notice Phil stood there watching him pace around the house.

“No,” he shakes his head quickly and his voice wobbles. “No, I’m just gonna sit here for a moment. Clear my head.”

He tries to offer Phil a smile but it’s so small it’d be easily missed.

Phil walks over to him and pushes him into the living room. “If you’re up, I’m up.” 

Dan just looks at him confused as Phil gently guides him to the sofa, grabbing the remote on the way.

“C’mon. Let’s rot our brains on 3am telly,” he smiles softly, sitting beside him.

They browse through some teleshopping; it’s mind numbingly boring and he despite the nice distraction in brings for the first few minutes, he feels the jiggle of Dan’s leg and the sound of him biting at his nails again.

Phil reaches over and pulls his hand away from his mouth, closing his fingers over his knuckles and gives it a squeeze.

“You shouldn’t have let me do that live show,” Dan finally speaks. His voice is weak and wobbles, sounding so far away and unsure. Phil mutes the tv and faces Dan.

“I shouldn’t have made that stupid joke, and I shouldn’t have done the liveshow and I shouldn’t have ever - fuck.”

He dips his head down and his shoulders shake, and almost as if second nature Phil pulls him in and holds him as he lets little sobs hiccup through him.

“I’m sorry,” Dan croaks, pulling away and pawing at the wet patch on Phil’s shirt of snot and tears.

Phil shakes his head. “It’s okay. Just cry on me for a bit. I’d rather you cry on me than do it alone,” he whispers.

Dan nods and his lip trembles and he falls forward again and sobs into Phil’s chest. They stay like that until Phil sits back a little and eventually Dan falls asleep. His face is crusted with dried tears and snot over his nose and cheeks but it’s the least of his worries.

A video gone wrong; it’s not the first time it’d happened. But the last time either of them had sleepless nights over a video had been years ago when they were both so unsure of the world they’d built around them. He supposes it hurts more this time because they’d thought they’d established it all now, gotten more comfortable. But this was a cruel reminder of human they both were still.

Phil finally drifts off to sleep with Dan’s heavy body in his arms and when he’s awake again, the sun spilling through the window, he feels empty, and it takes a moment to realize it’s because Dan has gone.

He can hear the shuffle upstairs and a clang of something and Phil wastes no time in following what’s making so much racket.

He finds himself in the AmazingPhil room watching the scene unfold before him.

Dan pulls the tripod to its feet and balances the camera on top. He’s dragging a light box across the small room when he finally notices Phil stood there in the doorway.

“Grab the microphone from over there, will you?” Dan asks, nodding to the dresser where the fluffy microphone lies.

Phil walks across the room, slowly and picks it up, before returning over to the camera and hooking it up at the top. Dan continues around him.

It’s worryingly scary.

“Dan, what are you doing?” He asks.

Dan stands up and laughs. It’s broken and false and so manic that Phil feels his body freeze over in fear for a moment.

“We’re filming a video, you spork,” Dan speaks, each word being forced out of his mouth with a false laugh.

Phil shakes his head, and takes the light box from Dan’s grasp gently. “No, we’re not. Come on, let’s have breakfast and just talk for a moment,” he tries, but Dan takes the light back with a sharp laugh.

“No.” He spits. He still has that stupid fake smile plastered on his face. “We need to film a video for your channel. I was thinking that Instagram explore page? Yeah?”

He’s moving around the dresser setting up props. Phil doesn’t miss how shaky his hands are. In fact, his whole body trembles.

“Dan. Stop it, you’re scaring me,” Phil pleads. But Dan only spins round with a grin and tears in his eyes.

“Why? I just wanna make a video Phil. We should film it and upload it tonight. C’mon, just help me.” He tries to sound enthusiastic but tears are rolling down his face. Phil’s heart clenches at the sight.

This is what he wants; he wants some sort of damage control and he needs Phil to do that for him. He needs him to pick up the broken shards he’d created and stick them back together for now. He needed it, yet he’d never really ask for it, never outright. He just wants help.

“Please,” Dan whispers, and Phil nods, swallowing thickly. He feels sick all of a sudden.

“Yeah, okay,” he nods again. “Lemme get dressed, okay?”

Dan nods, eyes glistening. “Okay. Thanks.”

They film the video and it the moment the camera blinks red in indication that its recording, the pair of them are putting forward pretense personas, more so than they usually do.  Dan falters a few times; Phil tries to keep up their usual steady flow of banter and excitement, but a few times during filming he becomes snappy and distant, and he realises it when he’ll do his fake laugh and fake smile and fake happiness.  
  
Phil’s lived with Dan long enough to know when the gleam in his eyes isn’t real, or when he’ll force his lips upwards and strain himself all for the illusion of pretending to be having a good time. Phil looks over at him quickly and knows this is one of those times. If Phil can recognise it, they surely will too.  
  
They wave their goodbyes and once the camera is off, Dan flops back onto the bed and throws an arm over his eyes whilst Phil tends to the little card with all the footage on it.  
  
“Do you need me to edit it?” Dan asks, his voice is low and scratchy and tired sounding. Phil just holds the tiny card in his palm tightly and shakes his head, even though Dan can’t see him.  
  
“I’ve got it. You really want me to upload this tonight?” he asks with a little uncertainty. They’ve never had to do this.  
  
They’ve managed damage control before; they’d done it and done it well. But never had they ever had to do something as rushed as this. Never something so blurry like this before.  
  
Dan nods. “Please.”  
  
Phil doesn’t argue. “Okay. But go have a shower please. You need it,” he tells him.  
  
Dan just gets up off the bed, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles and Phil can’t tell if they’re from new tears or out of pure sleepiness, but he hears him pad down to the bathroom, leaving Phil alone in his fake room with a fake video in his hands.  
  
*  
  
“I’m gonna take a break from youtube, I think,” Dan tells him in a quiet voice. They’re back where they started just 24 hours ago.  
  
Dan had been tossing and turning and bouncing around the bed and Phil had snapped at him to be quiet when all of a sudden Dan had burst into a fit of tears and since then he’d been pulled into Phil’s chest where he ran fingers through damp curls and brushes away tears with the pad of his thumb.  
  
The video hadn’t gone down too well. Phil’s twitter mentions had been flooded with a displeasure of a video that had Dan in it; and despite the large quantity of people who were trying to stay optimistic, or maybe just oblivious, it had hurt.  
  
Hurt really bad.  
  
“I need a fucking break, Phil,” Dan whispers. He’s crying again but now instead of cries that wrack through his body, it’s silent little tears that drip from him, like it’s the last of what remains inside of him.  
  
Phil hopes that’s not the case.  
  
He pushes his hair up off his forehead. He lets Dan speak.  
  
“I need a break before I have a breakdown, you know?” he croaks. Phil hums and presses his lips softly to his forehead.  
  
“I think you might be having one, babe,” he murmurs against his skin. It’s hot and clammy despite the shower he had hours ago.   
  
Dan laughs wetly, his voice cracking. “Fuck. I think I am. I’m having a fucking mental breakdown because of a fucking dick joke,” he cries.  
  
Phil holds him closer, chest to chest. “It’s not just that,” he whispers. “It’s not just a dick joke. It was so much more than that, you know that,” he reminds him.  
  
It was a toe in the water. It was a taste of something different; something new.  
  
Dan sniffs loudly. “I feel so fucked. I feel like I’ve deflated, Phil. Can a human even feel like that?” he asks.  
  
Phil doesn’t speak because he doesn’t have the answers. He supposed he himself is feeling deflated. The tour is approaching and Dan hasn’t stopped crying for the last three days. Three days he’s had to push him into a shower because of the sweat and grease rolling off his body. Three days of watching him eat a meal because he knows he wouldn’t do it alone.  
  
Three days and Dan wont contact his therapist or even open his phone at all for anything.   
  
Three days too long for Phil to think he shouldn’t consider the possibilities of suggesting putting a halt on the tour. He’s afraid to ask, but he knows it needs to be done.  
  
“We have rehearsals in a couple of weeks,” he tells him slowly.   
  
Dan laughs bitterly.  
  
“If you’re not up to it, then I’ll call in tomorrow. Say you’re not feeling well or something,” Phil says, a little more confidently now, but Dan laughs again and shakes his head.   
  
“No,” he sniffs. “There’s no way you’re cancelling the tour because I’m emotionally unstable right now,” he tries to laugh but it comes out more like a sob. Phil squeezes him tight.  
  
“You say stop, Dan, and we stop. Don’t do this,” Phil whispers and places another kiss, this one longer, into his curls. “Don’t make me do this, don’t make me watch you suffer.”  
  
Dan sniffs again, chest heaving with a hiccup. “I don’t want to stop the tour,” he speaks quietly, although a little stronger this time. “But I don’t think I can make videos again for a while,” he adds.  
  
Phil hums, carding gentle fingers through tangled curls.   
  
“No more videos. Not on my channel at least,” he whispers.  
  
Phil hums. He agrees. Maybe it’ll be hard, mostly because if Dan disappears off the internet during a world tour he knows there’s going to be speculation and a mob of people over the internet trying to pick apart his boyfriend. It hurts him, but if Dan needs this, he’ll let him have it.  
  
“We can still do gaming videos,” Dan says, “and ones on your channel. But I don’t wanna film my own for a while,” he says quietly.  
  
Phil nods, and presses his lips against his forehead again, keeping them there gently.  
  
“I need to figure myself out, Phil. I need to be _me_.”  
  
Phil kisses him again, “You are you. You’re just,” he pauses, “lost, right now.”  
  
Dan gives a dry laugh and nods, using the back of his hand to wipe away new tears that appear.  
  
“You think they’ll be mad?” he asks.  
  
Phil shakes his head. “The ones that care won’t be,” he mumbles against his head.   
  
“Yeah,” Dan croaks, “okay.”  
  
They stay in silence for a moment, and Phil takes comfort in the sound of Dan’s even, steady breathing. It was so much better than the stuttered panicked ones he’d grown familiar to over the past few nights.  
  
They won’t throw in the towel just yet; it’s not who they are. They admit defeat when necessary, but when a fight is ahead of them, they take it with much pride as possible. That’s how they’ve always worked, and they both know that.   
  
“Rehearsals next week?” Phil asks after a while. He needs to be sure.  
  
Dan pulls away to look up at Phil; his eyes are red and puffy again, but his bitten chapped lips turn into an almost smile.  
  
“Yeah,” he whispers, “course.”  


**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on tumblr !! @watergator


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